Letters: Air pollution and our lives

Arunabha Ghosh and Hem Himanshu Dholakia's column "Competitive pollutionism no good" (Inflexion Points, March 17) is significant since it talks of reducing air pollution in big cities without getting into the industrialisation versus environment-protection debate. If it is difficult to provide mechanical road sweepers to control road dust (identified as the major cause for atmospheric particulates), the use of manual sweeping and sprinkling of roads, a vanishing practice now, should be revived.

I think that vehicular exhaust, identified as the major problem in Chennai, is a greater pollutant than road dust in cities such as Pune, where three wheelers and light commercial vehicles abound. Here, the damage to the atmosphere can be reduced substantially just by strictly imposing the law and penalising the offenders.

Apart from the government and the industry, we, too, need to be environment-conscious by becoming aware of our polluting domestic practices - such as burning of garbage or not segregating it into dry and wet items and their negative consequences on our health and lives.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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